How To Fight Like Kratos with Eric Jacobus

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I had the insane privilege of working on Santa Monica Studio’s monumental Playstation 4 game God of War doing motion capture for Kratos, and the team put together this interview about how we approached Kratos’ combat in the game.

Eric Jacobus as motion capture stuntman for Kratos in God of War

[T]hey didn’t exactly hire a UFC fighter to do the motion capture for Kratos. Instead, they turned to a YouTuber who had been, for fun, making videos where he recreates moves from fighting video games – Eric Jacobus.

Bruno Velasquez, the game’s principal animator, had seen Jacobus on YouTube years back, saw him recreating moves from Street Fighter and Tekken, and said, “That guy needs to be our Kratos. Like he’s Kratos. Look at his moves. Look at how he’s flying and doing Superman punches!”

So they pretty much just sent the guy a message on YouTube …

While the actor Chris Judge plays the voice of Kratos and does all the cinematics, it’s Jacobus’ moves you’ll see doing the occasional chokehold and unleashing a fury of fists on one of the game’s unlucky foes.

Rappler (March 19, 2018)

Eric Jacobus motion capture audition video for Kratos, God of War

I was working on the Tekken In Real Life series when Santa Monica Studio, the team behind God of War, called and asked me to audition for the Kratos role. I proposed making a move list for them, and after tinkering some more in my garage I made a 6-minute reel for the character, like the IRL videos. They called me down to the studio and I started work soon after.

And thank God, because Santa Monica Studio saved this dad and his family when we were at a real low point. As a father on the brink of failure, I channeled that frustration and swung that ax for 8 hours a day as hard as I could, dropped on my neck as many times as they wanted, and climbed and kicked and punched non-stop, and I’d have done it 8 hours more. I got to work with top-level video game directors like Mehdi Yssef, Bruno Velasquez, Dori Arazi, James Che, and Tomek Baginski, and it was a joy working alongside Jade Quon, Chris J. Alex, Thekla Hutyrova, TJ Storm, and Kelli Barksdale.

Eric Jacobus Kratos – God of War Mocap with Chris J. Alex and TJ Storm

Game creators, filmmakers, and stunt coordinators are always scouring the internet for inspiration, and that’s how they found me. If you have a skill, the hone it, film it, and put it online. And do it nonstop. Treat it like a second job. I did at least ten of these Tekken IRL videos before they called me for God of War. Work hard, and you might be doing stunts for a project like this too.

Eric Jacobus motion capture performer for Kratos in God of War

Thank you to the team at Santa Monica Studio and all the people behind Sony Playstation for this great opportunity, and Katsuhiro Harada and Bandai Namco of Tekken for helping this garage man with a GoPro chase his dreams.